In the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, Senator Joseph Biden (D-Delaware) has solidified his status as that body's pre-eminent gasbag. Delaware Online reports:

Reporters began clocking Sen. Joe Biden's questions with stopwatches. Pundits began speculating that the Delaware Democrat's biggest political handicap might be his mouth. The Samuel Alito confirmation hearings should have been a place for the former Judiciary Committee chairman to shine. Here was a national forum, a chance for Biden, who has presidential aspirations, to strut his stuff to a larger-than-usual cable audience. It didn't quite work out that way. First, Biden insulted a university. Then his long-winded questioning style drew ridicule from columnists and late-night talk show hosts....Senators are a long-winded bunch, but even in that company, Biden's reputation for bloviation stands out.

...It wasn't just the talking that got Biden in trouble, sometimes it was the topic. "I don't like Princeton," he announced to Alito, a Princeton alumnus. The next day, the Princeton student newspaper reprinted a 2004 speech in which Biden had expressed his love for Princeton. Biden donned a Princeton hat the next day and confirmed he did like the college. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen devoted his entire column to Biden's gift for gab, warning that it could wreck his 2008 presidential ambitions.

Here's some of Cohen's piquant wordsmithery on Biden:

The only thing standing between Joe Biden and the presidency is his mouth. That, though, is no small matter. It is a Himalayan barrier, a Sahara of a handicap, a summer's day in Death Valley, a winter's night at the pole (either one) -- an endless list of metaphors intended to show you both the immensity of the problem and to illustrate it with the op-ed version of excess. This, alas, is Joe Biden.

....The tragedy is that Biden, who is running for president, is a much better man and senator than these accounts would suggest. But his tendency, his compulsion, his manic-obsessive running of the mouth has become the functional equivalent of womanizing or some other character weakness that disqualifies a man for the presidency. It is his version of corruption, of alcoholism, of a fierce temper or vile views -- all the sorts of things that have crippled candidates in the past. It is, though, an innocent thing, as good-humored as the man and of no real policy consequence. It will merely stunt him politically. 'Tis a pity. Biden occupies the sensible center of the Democratic Party.

Though an extreme case, Biden is not alone in posturing and preening during committee hearings. It rather goes with the territory. That's why I automatically tune out these events, and have to laugh at all the attendant tea-leaf reading and pontifications of the chattering classes. Look, it's simple: Roe v. Wade will never be overturned; in all cases, justices will approppriately formulate their votes on a case-by-case basis whatever their guiding principles; and the rest is all noise.

TECHNORATI TAGS: JOSEPH BIDEN, U.S. SENATE, SAMUEL ALITO, CONFIRMATION HEARINGS

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at January 15, 2006 12:11 PM

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